The Wormlips Scrapbook

Nothing to say. Ho ho ho. Heh heh. Here are pictures. Mom’s tree, for example:

Here’s Mom wearing two presents: a spider from me, and meerkats from Molly:

Eleni got very emotional with gratitude when she received a generous check from her grandmother, and was consoled by said grandmother and her sister:

Ma’s fella, Ed, dropped by for a brief visit:

After I received abundant bounty from my daughters and my mother, we did regular relaxing things for the rest of the day. I hemmed some pants and knitted. Eleni slept. Molly played on the computer and talked on the phone. I called my friend M in Sac’to. As we tried to figure out the date for a possible visit, he reminded me that “thirty days hath September.” That was well and good, but we forgot what happens in December.

For the rest of the day I worried about as much as I could think to worry about, which is a lot. Now I’m going to get back to that.

Mom thinks I should do something different with my hair.

Happy array of winter holidays.

Yesterday we did some errands, and stopped by my Aunt Sandy’s house to drop off some presents. I hadn’t seen her for years. She doesn’t look any older, while I do.

Back at Maw’s house, Stella had fun in the snow.

Eleni tried to see what it was like to be a dog running in the snow. It’s harder than it looks.

For dinner last night Mom took us to the Greenville Country Club, longtime bastion of the best of blueblood. There, I spotted something that vastly entertained me: a sign that would not have existed there during my youth.

Ever since I was young, being in a place like that makes me misbehave. I can’t help myself.

Eleni and I went into hysterics over something stupid.

Meanwhile, Molly and Mom had a staring contest — the kind to see who would laugh first.

Mom has an almost undefeatable, green-eyed glare that can either paralyze its victims with fear (if you’re one of her children) or disable them with laughter (if you’re not). But this time Molly won, with this move:

Shortly before 10 am today, I snuck outside into the sub-freezing air and cautiously climbed the icy road to the top of the hill in hopes of decent cell reception. I had a telephone appointment scheduled with my psychiatrist, and I wanted privacy. Though the bars on my phone promised clarity, the connection was terrible. The doctor’s voice kept vanishing. “Can you hear me?” I asked. “Or am I cracking up?”

We just got back from Greenville where, while Mom was picking up shrimp at the grocery store, I played a game with my girls as we sat in the car waiting. I called it “Spot the WASP” or “Spot the Preppie.” They’re pretty bad at it. I can recognize old money a mile away, and tried to share my knowledge. “Okay, now watch this person coming toward us. Look carefully. You can see she’s dripping with aristocracy.” It was Mom.

On our way home, we saw Santa stopped at a red light, his red, round belly (like a bowlful of jelly) practically busting the seams of his grey Subaru, his white beard flowing out its windows.

It was with surprising sadness that I prepared to bid farewell to Vermont, a sorrow ameliorated by the presence of Molly as I said goodbye first to Charity and Dan…

… and then to Lauren and Amy and Mow and Victor and Mary. We drove one last time past my pond, and just for fun I decided to prove to Molly that the road really is solid ice, giving her a nice little sideways adventure before we reached blacktop.

And I don’t know if you remember the waterfall I showed you a few months ago, which I drive by on the way to town, but this is what it looks like now.

It took us almost seven hours to get through seven states, with only brief stops enroute: once for gas and coffee, once because I saw a road called Cedar Swamp Road that called me, much to Molly’s dismay…

… and finally a detour through downtown Wilmington and through the neighborhood I grew up in, whose roads are now slick with ice and snow from the blizzard two days ago. As we drove up to Mom’s house we saw that Eleni, Stella and Maw herself were standing at the glass door awaiting us as we slid up the driveway.